In recent years, the world has seen an unprecedented increase in the use of e-mail for everyday communications. Since many people own or have access to personal or portable computers at work or at home, e-mail provides a swift and convenient medium for people to communicate with each other. Electronic mail communications can be used in a number of capacities, such as for sending simple messages or transferring files (e.g., word processing documents, graphic images, program applications, etc.).
E-mail is often useful in transferring electronic documents that can be printed by recipients using conventional equipment. Generally, the business world has enjoyed being able to almost instantaneously send documents (e.g., a contract) to recipients via e-mail to be printed-out and executed. However, one of the several limitations of e-mail includes requiring that the intended recipients have access to some sort of device for accessing their e-mail accounts for retrieving messages including, for example, personal computers, lap-top computers or palm-top computers.
Facsimile devices have also played an important role in the business community. Such devices have been used for some time and are useful for sending simple messages or transferring copies of documents. Nevertheless, facsimile devices do have their limitations. For example, facsimile devices are often expensive or lack portability. In addition, people desiring to send messages or copies of documents using facsimile devices must have access to such devices and an intended recipient's corresponding facsimile device phone number.
Heretofore, people only having access to facsimile devices have not been able to send messages directly to people only having access to e-mail. Such a situation often occurs when people travel. There is a manner for people who only have access to e-mail to communicate with people only having access to facsimile devices. Such e-mail access-only persons may print-out their e-mail message and send a copy of the message via facsimile to their intended recipient.
Additionally, there are Internet service providers that allow people to send e-mail messages to recipients having access to facsimile devices. Using these types of services, the originally sent e-mail messages are received by the recipients as facsimiles. One such service includes Faxaway®, a service provided at www.faxaway.com by International Telecom Ltd., a privately-held corporation based in Seattle, Wash., which allows people having access to e-mail to send messages to people having access to facsimile devices, which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety. These e-mail messages include, in the message address field, an address in the following format: facsimile-phone-number@faxaway.com.
However, the services mentioned above do not provide a manner for the facsimile recipients to send a response or send a new message to persons only having access to ordinary e-mail such as those normally provided at user work places, or through e-mail providers including AOL®, Yahoo® and HotMail®. It should be noted that the terms “ordinary e-mail,” “e-mail” or “electronic mail,” or variations thereof, are contemplated in this disclosure as being equivalent terms, and thus should be interpreted as such.